“Settlers up here are a confounded nuisance,” went on Welton after a while.  “They’re always hollering for what they call their ‘rights.’  That generally means they try to hang up our drive.  The average mossback’s a hard customer.  I’d rather try to drive nails in a snowbank than tackle driving logs through a farm country.  They never realize that we haven’t got time to talk it all out for a few weeks.  There’s one old cuss now that’s making us trouble about the water.  Don’t want to open up to give us a fair run through the sluices of his dam.  Don’t seem to realize that when we start to go out, we’ve got to go out in a hurry, spite o’ hell and low water.”

He went on, in his good-natured, unexcited fashion, to inveigh against the obstinacy of any and all mossbacks.  There was no bitterness in it, merely a marvel over an inexplicable, natural phenomenon.

“Suppose you didn’t get all the logs out this year,” asked Bob, at length.  “Of course it would be a nuisance; but couldn’t you get them next year?”

“That’s the trouble,” Welton explained.  “If you leave them over the summer, borers get into them, and they’re about a total loss.  No, my son, when you start to take out logs in this country, you’ve got to take them out!”

“That’s what I’m going in here for now,” he explained, after a moment.  “This Cedar Branch is an odd job we had to take over from another firm.  It is an unimproved river, and difficult to drive, and just lined with mossbacks.  The crew is a mixed bunch—­some old men, some young toughs.  They’re a hard crowd, and one not like the men on the main drive.  It really needs either Tally or me up here; but we can’t get away for this little proposition.  He’s got Darrell in charge.  Darrell’s a good man on a big job.  Then he feels his responsibility, keeps sober and drives his men well.  But I’m scared he won’t take this little drive serious.  If he gets one drink in him, it’s all off!”

“I shouldn’t think it would pay to put such a man in charge,” said Bob, more as the most obvious remark than from any knowledge or conviction.

“Wouldn’t you?” Welton’s eyes twinkled.  “Well, son, after you’ve knocked around a while you’ll find that every man is good for something somewhere.  Only you can’t put a square peg in a round hole.”

“How much longer will the high water last?” asked Bob.

“Hard to say.”

“Well, I hope you get the logs out,” Bob ventured.

“Sure we’ll get them out!” replied Welton confidently.  “We’ll get them out if we have to go spit in the creek!” With which remark the subject was considered closed.

About four o’clock of the afternoon they came out on a low bluff overlooking a bottom land through which flowed a little stream twenty-five or thirty feet across.

“That’s the Cedar Branch,” said Welton, “and I reckon that’s one of the camps up where you see that smoke.”